Touching the Dreamtime

Living in the sub-tropic coastal fringe on the east coast of Aus… albeit a sketch an a bit inland, we are busily now welcoming the arrival of spring and it is glorious. The flush of spring colour in the gardens, the fruit flowers on the mango tree promising a great crop. Soooo…. hoping the bees are busy.

While the Northern hemisphere is sinking into their winter we are busily emerging from ours and if the weather patterns are anything to go by it is gunna be a hot, wet summer. For Aussies, summer brings the Wet up north, the time of floods and cyclones of which we get the end of as they bounce down the eastern seaboard. This also brings a new step, a corner on the horizon for an author. New thoughts, new projects and new ideas particularly as you have rounded up old ones over the winter months now passed as I have.

I love the storms, adore a good electrical storm with fires the air and is a magnificent display of mother nature’s power, as much as I love a new idea or a good plot. It is the storms, which cradle the legends of the Dreamtime and there is nothing quite like sitting on the Kakadu Plateau and looking out over the vastness of the wetlands while different storms travel across the land. Yes… your view is so very vast up there in the Outback that you can watch the storms individually, they are like actors on stage yet in different plays performing for the privileged.

I adore the legends and myths of the Dreamtime, those that touch the reality of our lives and help mould who we are.

The Lore of the Dreamtime

The legend and Lore of the Australian Aboriginal Dreamtime is a mystery often, even to today’s descendants of those ancient tribes. Colonization of the continent of Australia, which began just over two hundred years ago has seen the loss of much of what was Aboriginal Lore as an ancient people were drawn into a culture which imposed its own ideals in a world of contemporary religion, commerce, industry and the development of an all encompassing social structure and the society that makes up our cities and towns, which they became a part of.

Finding little in common with many religions I spent years looking for its purpose, and looking at the results of religious passion or faith. I saw little that was encouraging until I began to examine Australian Aboriginal Lore many years ago. After realizing I had my own respect and connection to my land and the country of my birth this continuing curiosity and study has since been an interest of mine for much of my adult life.